Talk:The Decameron

Literary Impact

The impact of the Decameron is often overlooked by English speakers. Stories from it appear in works by authors like Shakespeare, Chaucer, and many, many others, often through a chain of translations, retellings, and modernizations. I'll look around for some exact information, but if others could start looking for others who borrowed from this work, I think that the article would be greatly enriched. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.182.216.157 (talk • contribs) .

I agree it would be great to have that. --Stbalbach 15:32, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Ha ha! I finally did it, like I promised. I added a sources/influences section that should be a useful addition to the article. —This unsigned comment was added by 67.169.251.248 (talk • contribs) .

Great addition. -- Stbalbach 15:56, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Literary Impact should be its own section. It should be made much more explicit how The Decameron influenced subsequent Western Literature, like Chaucer's Canterbury Tales et al. 128.62.79.85 (talk) 00:16, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

The introduction to this article almost seems to downplay the significance of these works. For instance if you look at the introduction to The Canterbury Tales, the last sentence reads, "The tales are considered to be his magnum opus, and one of the most influential works in Western literature." However the Decameron is described as "Bawdy" and only an "important" historical work even though it was completed two decades before The Canterbury Tales. 68.9.219.228 23:02, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I see no mention of Baldasare Castiglione's Book of the courtier, which likewise uses the framework of a group gathering repeatedly (in the court of Urbino) and telling stories, with a theme each evening (e.g. one evening on humour, dominated by Bembo). This must surely have been influenced by the Decameron – can someone find a source that discusses the connection ? Eddy, 84.215.9.172 (talk) 15:23, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

The Names of the Seven Characters

Can someone translate the names of the seven characters to help us understand how they are "pseudonyms chosen as 'appropriate to the qualities of each'"?

The Seven Women:

• Pampinea
• Fiammetta
• Filomena
• Emilia
• Lauretta
• Neifile
• Elissa

The Three Men:

• Panfilo
• Filostrato
• Dioneo

Sorry I'm such an ignoramus. Thank you. MishaPan 23:57, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Hello! Here is a translation based on the Italian wikipedia article on the Decameron. I hope you find it useful! Pampinea:(luxuriant), Filomena: (the loved one), Neifile :(new lover), Fiametta: (Boccaccio’s loved one, froma fiamma ,that is “flame”), Elisa: (other name to Dido), Lauretta (Petrarca’s loved one)Filostrato: (defeated by love), Dioneo (lustful), Emilia and Panfilo (all love). Isabel2014 (talk) 13:35, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Adaptations

Film

The film with Hayden Christensen and Mischa Barton should be mentioned. The Wikipedia page of Virgin Territory says so. Aixduran 12:06, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

In fact there are a few film adaptations that should be mentioned. Be bold, add it. Oh, maybe I will. DonPMitchell (talk) 02:43, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Theatre

"Shakespeare probably first read a French translation of the tale in William Painter's Palace of Pleasure." Should that be "... of the tale, translated into English in ..."? Errantios (talk) 08:21, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Footnotes?

Is there a reason that there are no citations for any of this information? (Lonerdottiearebel (talk) 23:36, 14 April 2008 (UTC))

On a similar note, should all of the stories be cited to the same source? Or could we cite something at the top so that we don't have to cite every character that is added --Amarzipan (talk) 16:49, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

transcriptions of Italian folk songs

Each day also includes a short introduction and conclusion to continue the frame of the tales by describing other daily activities besides story-telling. These frame tale interludes frequently include transcriptions of Italian folk songs.

What does this mean? What does transcription refer to here? Just how are the Italian folk songs included in the frame tales? Could the sentence be reworked to use another word?

The Wiktionary page for wikt:transcription quotes this article as an example, and it's a bit unclear of just what it is an example of. (Does the Wiktionary entry need updating? Is it perhaps missing a definition?) 194.237.142.20 (talk) 09:37, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Unreferenced section tag for "Analysis"

The section has no quotations at all, and it presents one homogenous view, as if it was based on the opinions of a single scholar, or the foreword of one specific edition.—Austriacus (talk) 20:57, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Retagged as para is pretty blatant original research. Could still be made into something worth keeping with a few decent refs and judicious pruning. 217.43.55.206 (talk) 00:04, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Image

Hello! I have contributed with an image of one of Boccaccio's novels by a contemporary artist. I think it is important to show how's Boccaccio work is alive through the centuries and continues to inspire artists. This is the link to the image:

IV Day, "Apologo delle Papere", is the fifth painting of the series based on the Decameron by Meli Valdés Sozzani.

Give me your opinion. Thank you! Eneaspicol (talk) 20:39, 19 December 2013 (UTC) Nice picture Eneaspicol! (Isabel2014 (talk) 00:52, 21 December 2013 (UTC))

Vernacular

According to Snow Rise's own definition in an edit comment here,

"Vernacular=contextual dialect of another language" (my emphasis).

In the present case, the "contextual dialect" is Florentine and "another language" is Latin. In other words, here:

the vernacular [of Latin] = the Florentine language/dialect.

The formulation insisted upon by Snow Rise is:

"Written in the vernacular of the Florentine language..." (my emphasis).

To me this appears wrong. The phrasing I originally used while working on the lead (as IP 86.168.48.247) was:

"Written in the vernacular (the language of Florence)..."

86.141.190.114 (talk) 07:10, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm not trying to be uncivil here, but you continue to revert on the basis of flawed interpretation of the meaning of vernacular and it's proper syntactical use in the English language. As I have tried to explain in the edit summaries, the wording " "Written in the vernacular (the language of Florence), it is considered the masterpiece of classical early Italian prose." makes absolutely no semantic sense. Vernacular as a common noun is not used in this fashion unless it is paired with a prepositional phrase designating which language it is a vernacular of. The way it was written (not sure if that is your phrasing or not, but your above post seems to suggest it), suggests that there is a concept called the vernacular and the parenthetical phrase clarifies that it is the language of Florence. This is simply not the way the word is used, syntactically or semantically, and if I may be frank, it turns the whole sentence into word soup. Further, Latin has nothing to do with this situation. The superordinate language in this case is Italian. Florentine is (or was in this context) a dialect of the Italian of the age. So when we say "Written in the vernacular of the Florentine language, it is considered the masterpiece of classical early Italian prose." we are saying the following: "The story is written in the vernacular (known as Florentine) which is a dialect of Italian, and this story is considered a masterpiece of the Italian language in general, though written in the Florentine vernacular, which a dialect of Italian." Only the wording in the former is, of course, far more concise, natural sounding, less redundant and more consistent with Encyclopedic tone. I usually don't like to argue from authority, but I have a formal background in comparative linguistics, so please friend, trust me when I say that I know the proper usage of this term.

In any event, it is clear to me that you are certainly not familiar with the term's idiomatic properties or its grammatical usage and yet you persist on reverting this change on a vague impression of how you think it ought to be used. You are already in violation of WP:3RR and I feel I've shown considerable restraint in not bringing the matter to the appropriate noticeboard, given my certitude of the word's proper usage and thus also of the fact that you are reverting without really being informed enough for it to be appropriate for you to be comfortable in doing so. I'm sorry if this seems a little strident -- your comment on my talk paged seemed to suggest you found something insidious in my edit summary, but I am just speaking to the facts here and I'm sorry, but it is clear to me that you are being too bold in your reversions of another editor's contributions given your command of the terminology involved. I am going to re-institute the change because the current edit continues to be inconsistent with English grammar and any kind of sense if you know the meaning of those words. If you really feel strongly about this, you can always RfC the matter, but I promise you it's not going to validate your position. If however, you revert again, trivial as this matter is, I'm going to have to get an admin involved. But if my above explanation still fails to elucidate the meaning and proper syntactic context for the terms in question, let me know and I will make further effort to make the matter clearer. Snow talk 09:02, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

You claim Latin has nothing to do with this situation. The superordinate language in this case is Italian. Florentine is (or was in this context) a dialect of the Italian of the age. But in reality Latin has everything to do with this situation, given that it, and not the Romance language of Italian (of whatever dialect), was the lingua franca (i.e. the "superordinate language") of the time. Like the Divine Comedy (which "helped establish the Tuscan dialect... as the standardized Italian language), The Decameron was written in Florentine at a time when there was no single standard version of the Italian language. 86.141.190.114 (talk) 10:25, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

In truth, both of us have been less than detailed in our first respective posts in this subtopic. I'll try to clarify my comments some. Latin was not the lingua franca in Italy at the time. Medieval Latin developed out of Classical Latin and served as a unifying language for the church and scholarship throughout much of western Europe and was itself followed by Renaissance Latin and Early modern Latin in this role. However, it is Vulgar Latin (or more specifically, the various vernaculars/regional dialects that it had already splintered into by this point) from which the romance languages have evolved. Florentine was already, by the point of the Decameron, hundreds of years into its independent evolution. While it's true that it did not yet have the moniker of Italian and that the idiolects of Alighieri and Boccaccio helped to codify the formal sociolect adopted thereafter in Florence that would be the foundation of Italian, even before these works the Florentine language, as an antecedent to Vulgar Latin, had already become a distinct colloquial dialect -- a language that was a proto-Italian of sorts. This dialect fused with other, similar, Tuscan dialects and, to a lesser extent, other Italo-Dalmatian languages to eventually become Standard Italian. However, this is all something of a red herring that we've let ourselves be led off by in that these details don't inform directly upon the change being debated; the proper usage (regardless of which language was the linggua franca) is still "the vernacular of Florentine" (meaning "the vernacular that was the Florentine language ") and using it in that fashion, in conjunction with the subordinate phrase that follows it (further reinforced by the wikilinks) underscores that this dialect went on to form the basis of Italian -- an important distinction in this article as the work in question played a noteworthy role in that process. Snow talk 12:59, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

synopsis?

maybe i'm just a dumb idiot, but could we maybe get a synopsis in this article? 70.171.203.51 (talk) 04:35, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Divine

It's been vastly proven that it was most certainly not Boccaccio who gave the name Divine to Dante's Commedia. 2806:2A0:C00:84B6:821:BBEB:4B39:9827 (talk) 03:50, 8 August 2024 (UTC)